A conventional image forming device is configured to have a sheet feeding cassette being arranged in a housing (main body case) below an image forming unit that forms an image on the sheet. The sheet feeding cassette is configured to be detachable from an insertion slot that is formed on a front face of the housing. A plurality of sheets, such as cut sheets having a predetermined size, are stacked and stored in the sheet feeding cassette that is accommodated in an accommodation portion that is provided in the housing. The image forming device is also provided with a sheet feeding mechanism, such as a sheet feeding roller, which separates one sheet from the stacked sheets and feeds the sheet to the image forming unit.
Examples of the conventional image forming device are disclosed in JP-B-02-001048 and in JP-A-09-002673.
As described in the above documents, the housing of the conventional image forming device is provided with a bottom plate that is disposed over an entire bottom face of the housing for supporting a bottom face of the sheet feeding cassette. Due to this configuration, the sheet feeding cassette is reliably supported from a bottom thereof by the bottom plate, while the bottom plate maintains a rigidity of the housing.
However, in a case where the entire housing is formed by injection-molding a synthetic resin, the total quantity of the synthetic resin to be used increases to raise the cost, due to the configuration in which the bottom plate is disposed at the entire bottom of the housing. The weight of the entire image forming device also increases in this case.
In a case where the bottom plate of the housing is totally eliminated, the bottom face of the sheet feeding cassette, which is to be accommodated in the housing, is placed directly on an installation surface, such as a desktop, on which the image forming device is installed. In this case, reference positions, such as a reference height of the sheet feeding cassette to be set in the housing, becomes uncertain according to the condition of the installation surface. Also in this case, the installation surface may be deteriorated by being scratched or scraped by the bottom face of the sheet feeding cassette when the sheet feeding cassette is inserted and extracted to and from the housing.